My Digital Space

I try not to be on my phone a lot. This boundary is something I have deliberately tried to keep up since I began using a smartphone when I was younger. I am old enough to remember a time before the iPhone, but I also am young enough that I had a cell phone (read: flip phone) in middle school mostly intended for parental contact. But I have watched and participated as the smartphone has become more and more essential to our daily lives. Perhaps, I was born with luddite tendencies, or I learned this judgment subconsciously, but I was never quite comfortable with phone and internet use overtaking my life. For this reason, I have an on-again, off-again relationship with the Instagram app and find myself deleting it off my phone several times a year only to redownload it after an appropriate time away. I also don’t have that many apps on my phone; I have three pages and none of them are full. I have never understood why people need so many apps. If you have more than three pages of apps, please tell me about yourself in the comments. 

Below I have mapped the digital space that I occupy on the internet. This exercise made me rethink this belief I had about my internet use. I use few social media apps, mostly Instagram, where I have a private account and a public account where I review peanut butter, and BeReal where I have only a few friends who I am interested in seeing every day. Everywhere else on the internet I have always simply lurked or been a visitor according to David White.  

Image source: Created by author

Personal Use 

Mapping my digital space has made me realize that although I am primarily a visitor, (I am not seeking community on the internet) I do spend a lot of time on the internet for both work and school. But I am not unhappy with this realization, I use the tools that I use to get to work, pay for groceries, and organize my days. The app that I use the most is definitely Habitica, which I wrote extensively about in my last blog. This app is essentially my planner, I use it pretty much every day, although sometimes on the weekends when I don’t have much to keep track of, I won’t use it as much. I do have a community through this app in the form of my party and we chat in our party chat, but this is not the primary use of the app. If I had the app on my phone, Instagram would be next. This and Bereal are apps I would consider myself to be a resident on. I love to comment on my friends' posts and chat with them, but I am not going outside of my IRL (in real life) friends to post opinions on YouTube videos or the few reddit subs I frequent. For this reason, I am primarily a visitor on the internet. I use online banking apps and useful tools, but I shy away from representing myself on apps or websites that would expose me to the larger internet, save, I suppose, this blog.

Professional Use 

On an average workday I would have Outlook open, sometimes two different accounts on the computer app and the web, open all day. Email is important for me to communicate with my boss and other colleagues throughout the day and I enjoy being a resident in my inboxes and leaving digital breadcrumbs of my work. In former positions, I used Microsoft Teams a lot more, but currently I lurk or visit and read the updates on the relevant channels. My work does not demand that I make myself known on the applications we use professionally so I am a visitor here too.  

Reflection 

Growing up, I was always warned that whatever you put on the internet will be there forever. I think after analyzing my map and thinking about how I use and interact with these apps, I have realized just how much this warning stuck with me. I have never been super comfortable with the concept of an online presence and am very careful with how I present myself. The internet can be scary, but I think I have developed a comfortable space where I don’t feel overly exposed or advertised to.